After a well earned lunch it was on to the afternoon sessions of the CEE Research Forum, were we started with a series of shorter Fast Track sessions with the first thread Research Remix: Cocktail of Innovative Methodologies.
Digital Research in CEE
How blue-chip multinationals have used digital research in Poland and Russia
Michalis Michael DigitalMR, UK
Up first after the break was Michalis Michael DigitalMR, UK who was here with a practical presentation on online communities in Poland and Russia; how to lead them and how to keep people engaged.
Using a case study for 3 global brands as a starting point. Michalis informed us that 80% of research in the region was still face-to-face, but the growing trend of smartphone and broadband penetration has provided greater opportunities for the use of online methodologies. With their clients DigitalMR used a combination of video diaries, short term communities with bulletin board discussions and online focus groups as a base for the study. Michalis went on to tell us that with the advent of the smartphone it has both cut the cost of video ethnography and allowed for better insights. Now there is no need to invest in camera teams to visit consumers and as the respondents can now directly record themselves on phones or laptops it provides more candid and personal data.
Michalis went on to say that the best communities are he ones that would have existed if they weren’t needed for research, such as mothers talking about child care online. By using Facebook groups and the bulletin board based Facebook wall they could recreate this and gather data from unsolicited conversations. He also added that the advantage of online focus groups is that often respondents gave longer more detailed answers to questions because there was no need to let other respondents finish.
How We See the World without seeing it
A multi-method app-sights study
Ute Rademacher Colibri Research, Germany
Following Michalis was Ute Rademacher of Colibri Research in Germany. She started by asking everyone in the room to close their eyes and dimmed the lights. She asked everyone to think of their smartphone and the apps loved the most. She wanted the audience to reflect and think without external stimuli.
This was because Ute was here to talk about work they have recently undertaken looking at whether darkness boosts creativity. Ute and the team were comparing results in a black box room and a normal focus group venue with a study looking at smartphone apps.
They found 3 core results. They discovered that darkness may not boost creativity but within a research setting it does act as a corporation catalyst; people listen more actively and cooperate with each other more. They also found that argumentation in the dark groups was more constructive and the insights were more authentic. Lastly they found that story-telling happens naturally people talk freely about what was going on in their life with no inhibitions.
So what did they learn about Apps? Smartphones, like a lot of modern technology act as status symbols, and for younger consumers virtual is real, provides empowerment and limitless instant gratification, structure and stimulation.
CEE Emotional Research Mix
Synergy of biometrical measurement and declarative data
Jacek Kowalski Neuroidea Poland
Piotr Szczepaniak Netia Poland
Up next was Jacek Kowlaski of Neuroidea, and Piotr Szczepaniak of Netia who, dressed as chef’s, where here to walk us through a recipe for a delicious TV commercial. They started with the basic ingredients of a good product, true customer insight and a creative concept. But what they really wanted to focus on was the spices, the emotional ingredients.
They had conducted a study of 100 TV commercials and measured reaction using face tracking, eye tracking and face-to-face interviews. During the study they played respondents a favourite TV programme and measured their reactions during the advert breaks. They found that certain elements in an advert evoked particular emotions:
- Happy – animated characters, sexual elements, children, smiling faces
- Sad – Politicians, elderly people, sad music, strange noises and empathy with problems.
- Surprised – Twists, strange characters and strange elements.
- Disgusted – Ugly pack-shots, disgusting products, politicians ugly characters
- Angry – negative characters, moments of destruction, aggression, inconsistency, mess, lack of understanding
- Fear – Negative connotations (such as dentists), loud noises, strange visuals
They found emotions give adverts the right flavour, an advert without emotion is dull, flat. There is no positive or negative emotions, their evaluation depends on the context in which they will be used. Adverts that mix different emotions are often more effective.
Co-creation in Central Eastern Europe
Jaroslav Clr Perfect Crown, Czech Republic
Jiri Michal Kraft foods, Czech Republic
In the final session of the fast track thread was Jaroslav and Jiri were here to talk about consumer creativity in relation to co-creation. With the rising need for new ideas and breakthrough commercials co-creation seems a reasonable path to follow.
The two were here to talk about their approach to co-creation for a biscuit brand from Kraft Foods. Sales of the product had been in a gradual decline and a rebranding was on the cards. They organisation came up with some new positioning, but it was generic and hoped to sharpen it by using co-creation,
But they wanted people with a specific outlook, they recruited only people who passed a creativity test. And ensured that Agencies and clients took an active role in the workshop rather than ‘outsourcing’ to consumers. Through this co-creation process they uncovered relevant insights for the consumer and brands that led to huge increase in sales and, huge ad views on youtube and were leaders in the market on social media
Research Remix: Cocktail of Innovative Methodologies – Master Classes
The final two sessions of the day before are a change to the usual format, with 2 masterclasses. The first looking at online communities and the second at Gamification.
Always-on Research
24/7 Dialogues with customers in a community? Yes, we can!
Anouk Willems & Tom De Ruyck – InSites Consulting
Tom started with an outline of today’s situation. Conversations can make or break brands, marketing people no longer have full control on what is being said about brands, and the empowered consumer is no longer happy just talking about brands but want to talk to brands. Customers are probably the best consultants available to hire for brands. They have a better of an understanding of a brand than many brand managers and vert eager to work. And they are usually always right.
He followed by setting out the differences between MROCs and more traditional listening methods like focus groups:
- Work with a larger group of people – a lot of opinions and clashes of ideas.
- You have a long term working relationship. From initial campaign concepts to execution
Anouk took over and walked us through some of the perceived barriers when starting a research community:
- It’s always on. This means only big brands with big budgets can do it and requires serious investment. Anouk went on to stress that it’s very possible to start small with short pilot projects that last for a weeks, allowing you to gauge its impact on your business.
- Objectives. MROCs are only relevant for product innovation. There are far more opportunities available than just products innovation, they can be used for all business objectives from improving customer experiences to testing existing products.
In the final section of the masterclass Tom and Anouk went through 7 statements and asked the audience to vote as to whether they were true or false.
- Can communities be representative? InSites had researched the question, looking at best performing individuals on MROCs. They discovered that it wasn’t representative, but that’s not a bad thing. Working with brand fans allows an inspiring environment within the MROC and improves results.
- The more participants the better. Tom told us that for a decent qualitative analysis 30 answers for any given question is optimum. But how many people do you need? For a short study 50 people will be enough and for longer studies 150 people. 150 people is the limit if you move beyond that it’s hard for participants to interact with each other and the moderator to ask probing questions.
- They are not in it for the money. Consumers are looking to make an impact to the brand. But when they initially sign up they are interested in an incentive, but once they’ve joined it shifts and the participation is usually enough.
- Gamified research is only nice for the participant. Firstly the team described how they include game mechanics in the MROCs, these included turning questions into challenges, battling sub-groups against each other and adding time limits and rewards onto tasks. They found that by creating these challenges people work harder and provide richer insights.
- Projective/creative techniques are too difficult online. Using creative techniques is very important online, there is an opportunity to use a lot of photos and videos and your connected to these people for a longer time so you can use longer term challenges.
- Mobile gives you more of the same. InSites found that by allowing participants using mobile provided more personal and contextual information and it boosted engagement.
- Members can help you in doing a better job as a researcher . Asking members to co-moderate throws up new questions and increases interaction. During the analysis of the data they opened it up to crowd interpretation, which provided between 20% – 40% extra insights. They also asked participants in as a co-researchers in the reporting stage, inviting them to challenge conclusions.
Gamification Masterclass
Jon Puleston, GMI, UK
Jon started by saying we need to think about surveys in the same way ad agencies think about advertising. Think about a survey as a piece of entertainment for a respondent. That’s the challenge. Length doesn’t matter as long as it’s entertaining.
He gave us a brief outline of the history of advertising, no one would deny the importance of creativity in the design of advertising. But advertising started with dry copy, focusing on what it wanted to say, and have evolved into focusing on how to say it, and the same goes for conference presentations these days.
But surveys have not reached that stage of evolution. They’re still designed to focus on what we want to know, and not how to encourage a response and give little credence to the consumer experience. The online world is a competitive landscape, there’s much to entertain and stimulate and online surveys are not competing.
Jon went on to address a number of areas that need more creative input, starting with motivation. We need to establish an emotional connection, and get the respondent into the mindset of answering survey before we bowl in there with the firs questions. Does your survey have a hook? Does it have a story. We need to understand that respondents will do more work when there is a clear meaningful purpose. Does your survey have a start, middle & end? Surveys with a strong motivating theme and clear story structure deliver better feedback.
Next up was the writing of questions. We need to remember its humans reading your questions. Bin the old school, face-to-face questioning techniques. Inject more humanity and realise the power of word play.
Jon then set out five techniques for improving questions:
1. Placing questions in a personal context
2. Evoking conjecture – taking people into different worlds, different scenarios.
3. Using abstract rules and conditions – rules turn questions into mental puzzles and make them more fun to answer
4. Setting up questions as challenges
5. Injecting a sense of playfulness
We need to encourage more thinking from respondents. We trend to treat respondents as if they’re stupid. Think about respondents as consultants and questions as tools to unlock thinking processes.
There is no box!
Breaking boundaries by creating a new mindset for the CEE region
Steve Keil CEO MammothDB, Bulgaria
Steve was here to talk about change and changing peoples behaviours in a company. In particular he wants to talk about innovation. The formula for the innovation ecosystem is simple, so why haven’t we progressed as far as we should have? Progress is slow, but technology is leaping ahead. Social science isn’t keeping pace. But why is this?
The industrial revolution gave us a lot. Reduced costs for production, mass production and mass marketing and allowed us to distribute globally. But there are some downsides, it drove a wedge between the producer, seller and buyer. For the first time you didn’t know who you were selling to and who you were buying from. This kills personal responsibility, we don’t know each other anymore.
As a by-product it created a university revolution. Now we could make all this stuff we need people to make them. So companies funded the university system, which was designed to produce line workers. It standardised learning and replaced the creativity of youth and exploration and discovery with accepted business and social methods.
Steve think’s we sold our souls for stuff, the safety of a constant pay check. We traded in our humanity for safety and security. But we are not machines, we have emotions and passions and a purpose in life, to live. The purpose of a machine is to work. We crave variation.
His point to the solution of innovation is simple. Machines do not innovate. Innovation is uniquely human, a profound act of humanity. We’re often told, it’s business not personal. But business is personal, it’s a fundamental part of our lives. We’re left with a choice, you can realise that business is life and work towards inspiring yourself and inspiring others or choose drudgery.
Angry employees are not productive, demotivated employees do not innovate. Happy people innovate. Happy people provide long term sustainability and higher long term profits. Steve presented 20 ideas on what we can do to make action into change.
– Elevate culture to the level of importance to profit.
– Grow slower and preserve your purpose.
– Small units are good. 125 – 150 people maximum.
– Rethink ‘scale’ focus on productivity.
– Reduce bureaucracy, how heavy is HR?
– Embrace freedom, reflect life in work.
– Eradicate fear, it’s counter active to innovation.
– People over process. Teams closer to the problem are more suited to dealing with it.
– Eliminate secrets they create artificial power gaps.
– Institute transparency, the free low of information.
– Release control, delegate to the lowest level.
– Flatten hierarchy, by empowering people you need less layers of control
– Ask why, challenge and discover new thinking
– Trust. Control measures say you don’t trust someone to do something right.
– Rethink individual bonuses, everything happens as a team
– Rethink pay, reduce the gap from bottom to top.
– No management without leadership
– Leap ahead, leaders jump first
– Embrace humanity, business is personal
– Let people live their stories.
Only when people thrive does innovation and productivity shine.
